Summer Series done, onto the Matchplay

Meant to post yesterday, but got a little bit too excited after thumping Chelsea, my apologies. So the Summer Series is in the books, Wadey binked yesterday and then today, despite the best efforts of Devon Petersen (and, to a lesser extent, John Henderson), we got more or less the field for the Matchplay we expected after we got a Wright/Price final, which Peter took. The new FRH top 20:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Peter Wright
3 Gerwyn Price
4 Rob Cross
5 Nathan Aspinall
6 Michael Smith
7 Daryl Gurney
8 Glen Durrant
9 Dave Chisnall
10 James Wade (UP 1)
11 Ian White (DOWN 1)
12 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 1)
13 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)
14 Mensur Suljovic
15 Chris Dobey
16 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)
17 Adrian Lewis (DOWN 1)
18 Jonny Clayton
19 Dimitri van den Bergh
20 Joe Cullen

Wade sneaks into the top 10 with his victory and generally much better form this week than White, Ratajski flies past a fairly mediocre Gary Anderson (who, it should be noted, is defending a title at the Matchplay which is a huge reason why he's a lot higher in the orthodox rankings than here), while Bunting, who wasn't able to get into the Matchplay field, did enough to sneak past Lewis back into the top 16.

Lower down, title winner Ryan Joyce sits at #42 just behind Jose de Sousa, the impressive Petersen's just 4k outside the top 50 now, today's surprise semi finalist Wayne Jones is into the top 90, Scott Baker has hit the top 100, and Jason Lowe should get there as well by the end of the week I'd think. Martijn Kleermaker had a good week and is at #110. Aaron Beeney is up at #287, after he was able to gain his first win of the season.

Here's who played well this week:

And here's not so much:

Some interesting names on the first list - Noppert, Clayton and Humphries continue to throw good stuff and stay under the radar, while Scott Mitchell sneaking into the top 20 is a bit of a surprise. After a fairly poor start to being a card holder, it's good to see Callan Rydz getting into the swing of things, that 11-20 lineup containing a great bunch of North East talent. In the bottom list, I don't know what Waites and McGeeney are up to, I wouldn't necessarily have expected to see both of those that low down. Probably chuck Dave Pallett into there as well, but other than that I think it's mostly the names we'd expect to see.

The Matchplay draw is done. I'm not going to analyse it to death tonight, we've got a week's lead time, but Joyce got the plum draw against Whitlock, Clemens/Cross should be very good, Clayton could easily make the quarters, de Sousa getting Wright is harsh but probably the pick of the ties (Noppie getting Price isn't nice either), nobody really wants to see a White/Cullen rematch but it is what it is, and has anyone got an easier run to the quarters than Dave Chisnall?

I think I'll take a bit more of a look by quarter, maybe one per day. Be back soon.